What if they have no intention of doing anything against the girl’s will. What if instead they simply intend nothing more than to caress something that they find indescribably lovely, perhaps like they would a puppy or a kitten, and it never occurs to them that the girl might object, or they honestly believe that she wouldn’t?
You might say: “How could anyone assume that she’d not object?” Well, in light of societal conditioning, nobody probably could. Everyone has been conditioned to believe that every woman automatically objects to being touched (even in nonharmful ways) without her permission every single time. Respectfully, this conditioning is silly. We don’t observe anything like it anywhere else in nature. In the absence of such conditioning, just as many (and very likely more) women wouldn’t be offended by a harmless touching than those who would. And the latter would simply make their preference known after the fact, in which case the touching would in the vast majority of cases cease. And when it didn’t, then it could be dealt with in other ways.
So, if intent matters, isn’t only HARMFUL intent that should matter? Like the intent to make the woman feel like she has no control over her body? I agree, that’s problematic and there are ways to deal with that. But if the intent is just to harmless caress something lovely, then no harm no foul, right? Even by Sam Harris’s logic (which I’m familiar with and agree with) and intent to harmlessly caress something lovely does no harm to either individuals or society.
You might say, “yah, but some women have so much trauma around sex that even a well-meaning love pat or caress can cause psychological harm.” Well, I get that. And some men suffer from PTSD such that slamming a car door or shooting fireworks traumatized them. Do we ban or shame car door slamming and fireworks in deference to these poor souls? Or do we instead seek to rehabilitate those pools souls so that they are no longer traumatized by harmless door slams or fireworks? We do that latter.
Thanks for the detailed responses, Sean. I'll reply here first and then to the others as well.
Here, I think, is the crux of the disagreement. Most human beings are locked in the concept of "self" and their consciousness means they have ego. By that, they are more than just a "something" but an enlightened, aware being with "free will" (something both you and I contend they don't really have). They see themselves as different than a rock or a tree. My hunch is you and others who have studied Buddhist-like philosophies from a non-theistic perspective (like Sam Harris and the people he interviews) would argue this is just a mental trick. Fundamentally we are no different than the rock or the tree.
This might be where you lose people in this line of thinking.
I don't think it's about social conditioning. I think it's about self-ownership. No one has the right to touch me or even invade my personal space. Doesn't matter if I'm a man or a women. If a man does something to me against my concept of self-ownership, I will naturally engage in conflict with them (this is a traditionally masculine response). If the same happens to a women they are just supposed to accept it or somehow use it to their advantage even they don't want it to happen? I can't agree with that because I think the concept of self-ownership is more important than primitive sexual preferences. I say primitive, because to me it's on the same spectrum as rape which you and I both agree is completely unjustified, regardless of the evolutionary urges involved. Men can resist their sexual urges. To argue they can not is demeaning, IMO.
I replied to these ideas in detail in another thread. My short response: Your problem isn’t really with non consensual touching (you’d have no problem with someone giving you or your spouse or daughter a love pat on the back), it’s with SEX. You automatically assume that any non consensual touch that’s remotely sexual in nature MUST somehow be an offensive violation of self sovereignty when other types of nonconsensual touches are not. I maintain that your thinking (and women’s thinking) on this point is purely a result of conditioning. For thousands of years we have literally terrorized our daughters to fear sex and the attention of men in order to maintain their chastity so as avoid being shamed by the moralizers and to preserve “family honor”. To this day women in certain Muslim countries who respond to men’s (not her husband’s) sexual interest in accordance with natural instincts rather than in ways prescribed bu the religion will be publicly stoned to death or subjected to disfiguring acid attacks (thus destroying her beauty and her sex appeal for life). At least here in American and Europe, all we do now is mental terrorize them by shaming and humiliating them mercilessly, I suppose.
And no, a woman is NOT just supposed to accept violations of self-sovereignty, Luke. If you hear me saying that, then I’ve not communicated well and I apologize. When self-sovereignty is actually really violated, the women should take action to protect themselves and men should assist in protecting them.
But what I’m suggesting is that both men and women reconsider what constitutes a violation of self-sovereignty. Is the touch inherently offensive (what makes a pat on the back different from a pat on the ass)? Do other creatures in nature react with similar offense and sense of violation to being so touched? If humans never had religion and parents had never been super paranoid (in an age without birth control or abortion) about their daughters getting knocked up by some schmuck, would human females always and in most every instance STILL be offended, violated and/or terrified by a little pat on the rear?
If not,then perhaps that automatic reaction of feeling like self sovereignty has been violated isn’t natural or normal. Perhaps its a result of years of being traumatically conditioned by a patriarchy that is more concerned about scaring its daughters away from the cabanna boy (so as to appease the moralizers and protect family honor) than it is about helping those daughters fully embrace their sexual interests and power. If that is true at all (and I don’t see how anyone can reasonably argue that it’s at least not partially true), then overthrowing the patriarchy absolutely requires overcoming (or at least re-examining) those feelings of being violated by every glance or touch, or at a minimum not terrorizing the next generation in the same way we have all past ones.
I have raised this issue (that the feeling of self-sovereignty being violated is conditioned through trauma rather than a natural aand healthy feeling) several times now and you’ve not responded. Do you agree that we have traumatized our daughers for generations in order to protect ourselves from the moralizers, preserve family honor and (pre birth control and abortion) to protect them from raising a schmuck’s child? I hope so, because I don’t see how this point can be seriously challenged.
If so, do you see how this systematic trauma (that denies women natural control over their own sexual decisions and if/how they use their sexuality) is itself the real source of the patriarchy?
If so, then do you see how overthrowing the patriarchy requires at a minimum that we STOP doing that to women and, ideally, that we work to rehabilitate those women (which is essentially all women) who have been so damaged?
And finally, if so, then do you see how rehabilitating them involves inviting and/or challenging them to seriously ponder and grapple with these issues (regarding the source of their feelings) rather just habitually reinforcing their conditioning (as you seem to be doing) that any unsolicited pat on the rear or kiss on the cheack is always necessarily an insult to their sovereignty?
If you answer that last question “no”, then please explain why. Again, why is an unsolicited pat on the back NOT an affront to their sovereignty but a pat on the ass IS? What’s the natural (non-conditioned) explanation for this feeling? Why is it not an affront to self sovereignty for a male to nonconsesually slap another male’s rear (as often happens in athletics or even business, for example, sometimes replacing the “high five” as an atta boy), but it is automatically an affront to self sovereignty (in your view) for a male to slap a women’s rear? Again, what’s the natural (unconditioned) explanation for this distinction?
Isn’t the real distinction just the fact that one is deemed potentially sexual while the other is not? If so, then why is that distinction relevant? Do you think that women NATURALLY fear men’s sexual interest and that this fear is not conditioned?
If so, then...why? Can you think of other instances in nature where that’s the case? Female bonobos are notoriously promiscuous. They have essentially zero fear over male sexual interest. Female chimps are less so, but they still seem to show little to no fear when a would-be usurper (to the alpha male) comes calling.
I contend that the human female’s great fear and sense of violation is a consequence only or primarily of traumatic moralizing by her parents and her religious authorities. If you have a better explanation, I’d love to hear it. And, if you don’t, then how can you not work along with me to challenge and overthrow that conditioned response so carefully enforced by the partriarchy for so long?